History Quotes

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - And often in the short one - The most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space, 1951

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Abba Eban

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.

Margaret Thatche

Morpheus Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

Matrix, The

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.

Cicero

The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge.

Erich Fromm

For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.

James Earl Jimmy Carter, Jr.

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

Georges Clemenceau

Socrates seems to be the philosophical napkin with which the ensuing cultural thinkers of history wipe their mouths of pedantic ooze.

Unknown

No great leader in history fought to prevent change.

John Maxwell, 21 Indispensible Qualities of a Leade

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

Benjamin Disraeli

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

Richard Milhous Nixon

There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world.

Karl Poppe

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

Edward Gibbon

Never in the history of mankind have so many owed so much to so few.

Sir Winston Churchill, Reffering to the RAF

Geschichte ist... ein Dialog zwischen Gegenwart und Vergangenheit. re - Transl.: History is... a dialogue between the present and the past.

Edward Hallet Carr, Was ist Geschichte?, S. 54

Tonight we are launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history.

Ronald Reagan

For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.

Margaret Mead

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Sir Winston Churchill

From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles.

Charles Sumne

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

Robert Frost

The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.

Benito Mussolini

The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from.

John Still

When you read history it is quite astonishing to discover that there never was a day when men thought times were really good. Every generation in history has been haunted by the feeling of crisis.

Harold Walke

May it not be that, just as we have faith in Him, God has to have faith in us and, considering the history of the human race so far, may it not be that faith is even more difficult for Him than it is for us.

Wystan Hugh Auden

To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina.

George Stanley McGovern

I am responsible only to God and history.

Francisco Franco

France is delighted at this new opportunity to show the world... that when one has the will one can succeed in joining peoples who have been brought close by history.

Franois Maurice Mitterrand

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

Honore De Balzac

History is bunk.

Henry Ford

The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

An attempt is already underway to revise history - To leave the impression that the former president had nothing to do with Watergate. But there is no doubt about his obstruction of justice after the Watergate break - In.

John J. Sirica

Some people make headlines while others make history.

Philip Elmer - DeWitt, in Time Magazine

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built - In mental disorder which drives him towards self - Destruction.

Arthur Koestle

History, although sometimes made up of the few acts of the great, is more often shaped by the many acts of the small.

Mark Yost

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Voltaire

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

Mitch Ratliffe